At Prescott, our educational strategy derives from our founder's vision and current reality as well as our guiding principles. Prescott was founded as, and continues to be, a distinctive school in Arequipa: Peruvian-Anglo-American, bilingual, international, and co-educational in character. (See "Our History"). Although our identity and experience is rooted in Arequipa, we are outward-looking, seeking to provide our students with "An education for the world in Arequipa" and our current reality is increasingly global as the world is brought to our door by information technology.
Our educational plan/approach is guided by fundamental principles. (See "Identity, Principles, Aims" for a full description). In brief, we believe in:

Personalized Humanistic Education

Educational collaboration with the family

Freedom of religious belief

Co-education

Bilingual Education

Education for personal competence

Education for sustainable environmental development and life preservation.

Our professional development, especially our two year teacher training program (PFT), arises from a holistic view of the human being as a physical, intellectual, emotional, social, and spiritual creature. Our educational principles also follow from this holistic view of the person, and our pedagogy is consistent with it.

For example, since we believe in humans as thinking creatures, we encourage them to process information instead of simply retaining it. For this reason, we have adopted Teaching for Understanding as our main pedagogical platform. This approach to education derives from longstanding research on cognition and lesson design conducted at Harvard University, and is well-respected in the educational community. (For more information, see http://learnweb.harvard.edu/alps/tfu/index.cfm).

Also, since we see people as social creatures, we emphasize communication and social responsibility. We place a premium on English fluency, even though most of our students are native Spanish speakers. Staff and students alike are encouraged to take the Cambridge examinations in English, and we are a Cambridge Examination Centre. (For more information, see http://www.cambridgeesol.org/index.html).

The International Baccalaureate Program is also a good fit for us, since it emphasizes communication and social responsibility as well as thinking. (For more information, see www.ibo.org). Again, this program is widely respected and highly prestigious, but we choose to adopt it because it is consistent with our view of the person.